Bardet Super Combativite!

[TMP402]

Re:

Honestly, Sagan would probably have taken this in my book. Breakaways he really had no business being in. Between Bardet and Pinot for example, I'd give it to Pinot on sheer stubborness (which paid off!).

The only mark against Sagan is I don't think he went on a breakaway in the Alps - or at least not in the final three stages. if he was prepared to be in a break then I would say it was an absolute injustice for him not to get it, but in reality he was on the break mostly in terrain that it was not impossible for him to win from, so it was as much a good strategy as pure attacking.

 

[Tonton]

I started and deleted 10 replies, so here we go:

Sagan should have won. He was the more aggressive rider over the three weeks. Maybe the fact that he won the green jersey somehow made him ineligible for a best loser award, which is a BS award, which is what this award is. On top of that, it's named "Prix de la Combativite" (fighting spirit award) when in reality it often is awarded a consolation prize. No surprise that things get confusing. So Sagan all the way, but some may argue that JCP no-quit attitude could have been rewarded. That would have been a bit pro-French of a choice, but again, it's not the Tour of Polland, is it? Honorable mention to Pinot, who came back strong, could have won two stages and didn't let go. He fought to the bitter end. Combatif.

 

[carton]

If you're not going to give it to Sagan because he won the points then don't give it to Bardet who won a stage. Between Rolland, Talansky and Pauwels on that criteria.

 

[Tonton]

Re:

If you're not going to give it to Sagan because he won the points then don't give it to Bardet who won a stage. Between Rolland, Talansky and Pauwels on that criteria.

The green jersey is a major classification, though. And that's not the point I was making. Rolland, Talansky, Pauwels? Meh. Truth is: only Sagan showed his face all three weeks.

 

[joe_papp]

Super Combativite should be referred to informally on CN forum(s) as the anti-Ninja-of-the-Tour prize...viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29706

 

[TMP402]

Bardet responds to de Gendt:

Romain Bardet ‏@romainbardet 38 minutes ago

@DeGendtThomas Hats off

 

[Gigs_98]

At the moment I only have two stages in my mind where bardet was in the break (although there were probably more) and he lost one of those because he didnt want to work together with pinot. very combative
I would have voted for sagan too btw.

 

[TI-Raleigh]

Sagan was the best choice, although Bardet fought very hard after a crap first week. I would have liked to see Laurens ten Dam get some credit though... a classic hardman.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re:

They should just get rid of the whole thing, its too subjective

Yeah. Not only is it subjective, there seem to be no system of any kind in handing out the daily awards.
Sometimes it makes sense: Huzarski getting it after stage 8: He was in the main break, and then he decided to get into the contra-break as well.
Other times it really doesn't make any sense: Vanbilsen getting it after stage 10, when it was Fedrigo who made the most work in the break and lasted the longest.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

If it keeps Sagan from winning something, however token, I can only approve.

You don't like Sagan? How come?

Peter Sagan is by almost all accounts an exciting, interesting racer, whose racing style I have little to complain about. However, he is also in almost all thoughts and deeds a complete attention-seeking douchebag who needs bringing down a peg or two. His "look at me!" antics and immaturity are something I cannot find appealing and cannot look past. He reminds me of those children at school who always misbehave and do stupid things in the classes they're not good at because they need the attention to be paid to them.

Take Cav's attitude from when he was slagging off Greipel, insulting all who dared challenge him and blaming others for every time things didn't go his way. Add in a healthy dose of Riccò's self-praise and arrogance (along with flair for casual sexism). Increase the exposure level due to the higher number of races he can be competitive in due to his versatility. Now top off with a huge dollop of sycophantic commentary and fan adulation.

And there you have it.

If Simon Gerrans, Chris Froome, Mick Rogers and Peter Sagan were in an attack group (however improbable that may be... Gerrans in an attack group lol), I would actually want to see Sagan come 4th. That's how much I dislike him.

 

[Tonton]

Re: Re:

If it keeps Sagan from winning something, however token, I can only approve.

You don't like Sagan? How come?

Peter Sagan is by almost all accounts an exciting, interesting racer, whose racing style I have little to complain about. However, he is also in almost all thoughts and deeds a complete attention-seeking douchebag who needs bringing down a peg or two. His "look at me!" antics and immaturity are something I cannot find appealing and cannot look past. He reminds me of those children at school who always misbehave and do stupid things in the classes they're not good at because they need the attention to be paid to them.

Take Cav's attitude from when he was slagging off Greipel, insulting all who dared challenge him and blaming others for every time things didn't go his way. Add in a healthy dose of Riccò's self-praise and arrogance (along with flair for casual sexism). Increase the exposure level due to the higher number of races he can be competitive in due to his versatility. Now top off with a huge dollop of sycophantic commentary and fan adulation.

And there you have it.

If Simon Gerrans, Chris Froome, Mick Rogers and Peter Sagan were in an attack group (however improbable that may be... Gerrans in an attack group lol), I would actually want to see Sagan come 4th. That's how much I dislike him.

Can't argue that...

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

They should just get rid of the whole thing, its too subjective

There are a couple of ways that they could go to make it less subjective though - though all have their flaws.

The Giro has the Trofeo della Fuga classification, which awards a point for every kilometre spent at the head of the field in a group of 10 or fewer. This means you can track the riders who've spent the most time on the attack. The drawbacks to this are that if the break goes it will not count GC attacks behind even if the GC guys are extremely combative, for example Heras in 2005 would only have got points for the last few km of Pajares but was on the move for a long time before that. It also benefits riders who accumulate breakaways without necessarily having been in meaningful attack moves - eg benefiting de Gendt here over Sagan, who may have had fewer km in the attacks but made more - and more significant - ones and impacted the race far more.

The Giro also used to have the Intergiro classification, which basically was a time-based classification that treated an intermediate point as the finishing line and ranked riders based on their time across that. This is quite a cool classification in theory, however in reality it often saw breaks pulled back to defend it, sometimes even with sprinters then picking up bonus seconds in it (Massimo Strazzer was particularly notable for this), and obviously somebody who lights up the attacks in the final few kilometres would count for nothing if they'd already passed the Intergiro.

The Peace Race - and subsequently most Ostbloc races - had a creative "Activity" classification, which awarded equal points to the first 3 or 5 (depending on period) atop each mountain, at each intermediate sprint (there were traditionally 2 each semitappe and 3 each full stage), in the stage finish, and, crucially, a bonus point was awarded to each member of a group of 10 or fewer that was 30" ahead of the next finisher at the end of the stage. An extra bonus point was awarded for each additional 30", so finishing 2 minutes ahead of the next group would net you 4 points. The difficulty of this is that it could then feasibly be won by a sprinter if nobody worked hard in the breaks and the team pulled back all the key moves at the end so nobody got the bonus points; also it would not reward unsuccessful attacks the same way even if an attacker was far more aggressive but less adept at picking the right move to be in.

 

[ILovecycling]

Re: Re:

If it keeps Sagan from winning something, however token, I can only approve.

You don't like Sagan? How come?

Peter Sagan is by almost all accounts an exciting, interesting racer, whose racing style I have little to complain about. However, he is also in almost all thoughts and deeds a complete attention-seeking douchebag who needs bringing down a peg or two. His "look at me!" antics and immaturity are something I cannot find appealing and cannot look past. He reminds me of those children at school who always misbehave and do stupid things in the classes they're not good at because they need the attention to be paid to them.

Take Cav's attitude from when he was slagging off Greipel, insulting all who dared challenge him and blaming others for every time things didn't go his way. Add in a healthy dose of Riccò's self-praise and arrogance (along with flair for casual sexism). Increase the exposure level due to the higher number of races he can be competitive in due to his versatility. Now top off with a huge dollop of sycophantic commentary and fan adulation.

And there you have it.

If Simon Gerrans, Chris Froome, Mick Rogers and Peter Sagan were in an attack group (however improbable that may be... Gerrans in an attack group lol), I would actually want to see Sagan come 4th. That's how much I dislike him.

I usually dont say a word against your post as they are brilliant and there is nothing to 'counter-ask' , but in this case I cant agree.
I dont know to what extent you know Sagan, but I have to point out few things.As I live only hours away from his home and in the east of my country we have many slovakian friends, I know dozens of people who are in contact with him several times a month and I personally met him few times when he was younger, and also now as he was a profesional.Also have good references from his trainer (not nowadays but when he was mountain biking) as cycling people in czechoslovakia know each other a lot (not many people who did cycling proff. before).
From this base I must say that Peter is a very quiet guy, very kind and polite.Also he doesnt like media attention as you would think, in contratry he probably doesnt handle the media attention very good.He is from a good family with good relationships and thus he is not (and never was) the type of guy you said.Yeah, of course there are examples of him behaving 'differently' in first races, as he was so superior that those were extremely boring and uneventful for him, but he always respected opponents, people and especially all cyclists.


Also why you dont like Mick Rogers?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

I usually dont say a word against your post as they are brilliant and there is nothing to 'counter-ask' , but in this case I cant agree.
I dont know to what extent you know Sagan, but I have to point out few things.As I live only hours away from his home and in the east of my country we have many slovakian friends, I know dozens of people who are in contact with him several times a month and I personally met him few times when he was younger, and also now as he was a profesional.Also have good references from his trainer (not nowadays but when he was mountain biking) as cycling people in czechoslovakia know each other a lot (not many people who did cycling proff. before).
From this base I must say that Peter is a very quiet guy, very kind and polite.Also he doesnt like media attention as you would think, in contratry he probably doesnt handle the media attention very good.He is from a good family with good relationships and thus he is not (and never was) the type of guy you said.Yeah, of course there are examples of him behaving 'differently' in first races, as he was so superior that those were extremely boring and uneventful for him, but he always respected opponents, people and especially all cyclists.


Also why you dont like Mick Rogers?

If he's a quiet guy who is very kind and polite, he's obviously playing a character for his media persona then, because his media persona and the character he cuts in public is the very opposite of that. I'm sorry, much like Cav making sure he took the time to thank his teammates in the midst of telling us how he was better than the rest of us and André Greipel was stupid and talentless (who's laughing now, Cav?), and he never deserved blaming for anything in his life, there's just too much of the other side of Sagan for me to buy him as a good guy who "was never" an obnoxious attention-seeking douchebag, when he's been shown acting like an obnoxious attention-seeking douchebag at a very high-profile level on many occasions.

And as to why I don't like Mick Rogers, what reason could you possibly give for liking Mick Rogers?

 

[Finn84]

Does anyone have idea how combativity was counted pre-2003? (when current system started)

Riders were awarded combativity points for each stage and they were counted together. But it's difficult to see the logic with points.

 

[ILovecycling]

Re: Re:

I usually dont say a word against your post as they are brilliant and there is nothing to 'counter-ask' , but in this case I cant agree.
I dont know to what extent you know Sagan, but I have to point out few things.As I live only hours away from his home and in the east of my country we have many slovakian friends, I know dozens of people who are in contact with him several times a month and I personally met him few times when he was younger, and also now as he was a profesional.Also have good references from his trainer (not nowadays but when he was mountain biking) as cycling people in czechoslovakia know each other a lot (not many people who did cycling proff. before).
From this base I must say that Peter is a very quiet guy, very kind and polite.Also he doesnt like media attention as you would think, in contratry he probably doesnt handle the media attention very good.He is from a good family with good relationships and thus he is not (and never was) the type of guy you said.Yeah, of course there are examples of him behaving 'differently' in first races, as he was so superior that those were extremely boring and uneventful for him, but he always respected opponents, people and especially all cyclists.


Also why you dont like Mick Rogers?

If he's a quiet guy who is very kind and polite, he's obviously playing a character for his media persona then, because his media persona and the character he cuts in public is the very opposite of that. I'm sorry, much like Cav making sure he took the time to thank his teammates in the midst of telling us how he was better than the rest of us and André Greipel was stupid and talentless (who's laughing now, Cav?), and he never deserved blaming for anything in his life, there's just too much of the other side of Sagan for me to buy him as a good guy who "was never" an obnoxious attention-seeking douchebag, when he's been shown acting like an obnoxious attention-seeking douchebag at a very high-profile level on many occasions.

And as to why I don't like Mick Rogers, what reason could you possibly give for liking Mick Rogers?

Ok, feel free too think that, I just expressed my experience with him


To your last question...That amazing win against gautier and tommy plus beating young Canc in WC tt

 

[Gigs_98]

Re: Re:

If it keeps Sagan from winning something, however token, I can only approve.

You don't like Sagan? How come?

Peter Sagan is by almost all accounts an exciting, interesting racer, whose racing style I have little to complain about. However, he is also in almost all thoughts and deeds a complete attention-seeking douchebag who needs bringing down a peg or two. His "look at me!" antics and immaturity are something I cannot find appealing and cannot look past. He reminds me of those children at school who always misbehave and do stupid things in the classes they're not good at because they need the attention to be paid to them.

Take Cav's attitude from when he was slagging off Greipel, insulting all who dared challenge him and blaming others for every time things didn't go his way. Add in a healthy dose of Riccò's self-praise and arrogance (along with flair for casual sexism). Increase the exposure level due to the higher number of races he can be competitive in due to his versatility. Now top off with a huge dollop of sycophantic commentary and fan adulation.

And there you have it.

If Simon Gerrans, Chris Froome, Mick Rogers and Peter Sagan were in an attack group (however improbable that may be... Gerrans in an attack group lol), I would actually want to see Sagan come 4th. That's how much I dislike him.

I find Sagan more childish than an attention seeking douchebag. I always have the feeling he is just funny and doesn't really care what other people think about him. For example his "wolf of wall street" interview after the gap stage was anything but serious but not attention seeking. I never had the feeling he is arrogant or that he wants to put himself into the center of attention.
Btw, I remember that during this years RVV, Jens Voigt said on german eurosport, that he wants Sagan to win the race because he really likes him, so I guess he is popular with other riders as well.

 

[SmorgCycle]

Re: Re:

If it keeps Sagan from winning something, however token, I can only approve.

You don't like Sagan? How come?

Take Cav's attitude from when he was slagging off Greipel, insulting all who dared challenge him and blaming others for every time things didn't go his way. Add in a healthy dose of Riccò's self-praise and arrogance (along with flair for casual sexism). Increase the exposure level due to the higher number of races he can be competitive in due to his versatility. Now top off with a huge dollop of sycophantic commentary and fan adulation.

Ay? I don't remember ever hearing of Sagan insulting others or blaming anything other than himself when things don't go his way. In fact, I didn't really care much for him (was always rooting for Cancellara during the cobble classics, and Sagan is obviously a rival ), but I warmed to him last year when he caused a crash toward the end of a wet stage, I think at the TdF, and he owned up to it and even apologized to the riders that went down because of him when he was interviewed after the finish. That's about as not-Cavendish as you get!